In control systems such as switching power supplies, servo loops, and robotic controllers, error detection is always the first step before the control loop can execute any other function. Error detection determines the magnitude of necessary error correction, if any, and typically may be taken either from the output of a simple voltage comparator or an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). In the case of the analog-to-digital converter, the output is generally filtered by a downstream digital signal processor (DSP) before applying error correction.
In single-chip controller applications where cost and power are major design concerns, the analog-to-digital converter and the digital signal processor must have a simple architecture and an efficient coding scheme so that the downstream digital signal processor may be optimized for size and power. However, conventional analog-to-digital converter and digital signal processor architectures generally do not offer such a solution.
There is, therefore, a need in the art for a simple architecture analog-to-digital converter with output coding simplifying downstream digital filter design.